Panels

Panellists participate in surveys because they receive an incentive and the more studies they contribute to, the more attractive to them. They become used to the typical line of questioning and consequently lose a degree of “freshness” that researchers ideally want to have. However, panels provide a fast turnaround, are cost effective and researchers can invite eligible respondents based on their pre-registered profile.

To counter this conditioning effect of online respondents, river sampling is meant to provide fresh contacts with “novice” respondents. River sampling intercepts and engages respondents by banner ads, popups as they surf the web, or other means such as random contacts through SMS or social media, instead of drawing them from an existing database. No profile data exist for these respondents and researchers therefore rely on screening questions only.

The advantages of river sampling is that its reach is not limited to a pool of respondents participating in a panel, which opens opportunities to reach countries and demographic segments therein, and respondents are less survey “savvy”.

However, because participation is often impulsive and on the fly, they are more likely to abandon the completion a survey and therefore this method does not work well with questionnaires that are longer than 10 minutes. Furthermore the usual QA measures panels adopt do not apply and therefore quality control is more of a challenge.